Penguin Classics: Old Goriot

Old Goriot by Honore de Balzac is considered one of his masterpieces, but has been seen as being to hard on humanity. Perhaps, but humans are quite capable of despicable behavior. Here’s an apt quote from the novel: “I should go on forever if I had to describe the deals that are made for lovers, finery, children, housekeeping, or for vanity, rarely for the sake of virtue, you may be sure. So the honest man is the common enemy.” Old Goriot is one of those enemies he adores his two daughter above all else and they greedily squeeze every franc from his existence. Goriot shares a boarding house with Vautrin, a corrupter and professional criminal on the lam, and Rastinac an ambitious student whose ambitions mirror those of the protagonist from another Balzac novel, Lost Illusions, but Goriot’s fate is the main story here and it is a truly pitiful tragedy